He's the newest member of our NFL Picks panel this season. So bust my chops all you want about my 4-12 week (Oh, in the name of Vince Lombardi, don't let it happen), but 11-year-old Max just became a diehard sports fan last year. Yes, his science fair project analyzed quarterbacks taken in the top five picks of the draft since 1998, but there are so many lessons the young fan has to learn.

You'll love the kid. He's got chutzpah and sent the sports department a letter asking to pick the games. I'm not sure what tugged at my heart more — the part in the letter his dad helped him type saying he "would faithfully submit my picks each week and would take it very seriously" or the baseball photo he included. So now he's on the Times Union team, picking games all season against local sports broadcasters.

Like many of us, the sixth-grader from Latham's obsession was hereditary. He couldn't head to his grandparents' house every NFL Sunday to watch with his dad and uncles without eventually asking what "eight in the box" meant. Next thing he knew he was memorizing the Giants' depth chart.

His dad, David, says he's the kind of kid who goes "all-in," citing Max's Michael Jackson obsession in 2009 and an intense game show phase. But we know sports is more consuming than the King of Pop and old episodes of "Press Your Luck." And sports is going to be his wingman.

It will help him communicate in many social settings. Meeting his college roommate for the first time, he can fill the awkward silence as they sit on their twin beds with "Hey, is that a Redskins poster? I saw them play my Giants when I was in sixth grade. It was RGIII's rookie season."

This works with baseball, too. But let's face it — football is everything. Grandpas used to bond with grandsons while dangling fishing lines in a lake. Last year, Max co-owned his grandpa's fantasy team.

In adulthood, Max will high-five strangers in a bar and ask his co-worker, "How you holding up?" after their team coughs it up in the Super Bowl.

Sports can be that great escape when life isn't going well, the one place we can feel the win even if we're soaking in loss. For three hours on a Sunday afternoon, a running game means more than a rat race. The Bills mean more than the bills.

He'll bond with a good chunk of humanity (and in some cases, inhumanity) as he gobbles pizza and works a solid dent into his couch.

This season, as Max tries to predict the outcome of games, he'll see it's impossible. He'll learn that the year we flipped a Sacajawea coin and let the coin make its own picks, it didn't finish far off the "experts."

And not to paint over Max's 11 years with cynicism, but he'll also realize people — especially people named Cam Newton — will let him down when he's two wins from a perfect week. He'll come to accept that if he wants to do well, the same kid who nearly had to be revived after he got Eli Manning's autograph at training camp will have to confront the fact that it's unlikely the Giants will have a perfect season and he may have to pick against them. (This is a truth he's already faced. You're ahead of many of us, Max.)

And even if his chops get busted at the bus stop for a bad week of picks, he'll be OK. He'll get it soon enough. He's one of us now.